Minta on Darwin
Survival of the Fittest Troll

“No,” said my troll-mother Minta one morning.

I’m in my teens now at my parents kitchen table and enjoying what was a traditional grandmother Olga breakfast—the yoghurt-like “long milk” (or “täte” as it is still known in my parts of the country) that we made by adding a tablespoon of this long milk to a liter or two of regular milk and then let this sit overnight. Come morning, all the regular milk, be it a quart or a gallon (to speak U.S. measurements), will now have fermented into long milk as well in a fascinatingly fast replication (frenzied is a word that comes to mind) of the bacterial culture in question.

Oh, let me elaborate on this already lengthening aside: historically, that is, before reliable refrigeration, when milk would and could “go bad” within days, fermenting the milk was a way of preserving it—making it keep, and stay edible, much longer, say weeks, before going truly bad. This fermentation was brought about (still is, of course) by a bacterial culture of the lactobacillus family that converted milk-sugar into lactic acid—at a mad rate, yeah, I mentioned that. This made the lactic proteins “fatten” and so change the consistency of the milk from watery to more creamy, almost rubbery.

One way to test that the long milk is ready for consumption is to scoop up a tablespoon of the long milk and then turn the spoon upside down: the long milk should then stretch itself back onto your plate—into its recently abandoned family, as it were, in a long white string, and leave the spoon completely dry and long-milk free: that meant that the long milk was good and ready to eat.

If the spoon was wet, or if not all of the long milk retuned home, let it sit for a while longer.

By the way, these lactobacilli not only preserved the milk but also gave the fattened milk antibiotic properties which made it extra “good for you.”

And, really, it was (and still is, I gather—as I write this years later) amazingly good, at least to me growing up with it.

Of course, I knew nothing of this beneath-the-surface, down-in-the-engine-room bacterial-goings-on while sitting down to this long milk breakfast that morning.

So, let’s return.

Oh, by the way, into this long milk I also crumbled what we called “thin bread”. This was a crisp, very thin white bread that came in large cakes (not unlike un-spiced poppadom, come to think of it) of whitish bread which was as if designed for crumbling into long milk.

Yum.

Okay, now let’s get back.

“No,” said Minta that morning, in answer to my question. “We never had any such a one as your Darwin.”

“Olga thinks he’s the Devil.”

“We don’t have any of that kind either.”

“No Devil?”

“No.”

“You’re lucky.”

“We are.”

“So,” I said after another spoonful or two or three, “there’s no survival of the fittest troll?”

“You mean Darwin-like?” Wanting clarification.

“Yes.”

“Tell me more about the man,” she said.

And so, while finishing my breakfast, and through two cups of coffee, I told her all I knew about Charles Darwin—as objectively as I could, keeping in mind that I was talking about Olga’s Devil.

Once I had finished, Minta (considering her reply) looked at me for quite a little while. “We’re not that philosophical,” she finally offered.

I said nothing in return.

“We’re here, aren’t we?” she added, significantly.

“No, denying that,” I said.

“Fit enough to survive, you think?”

“Sure.”

“And we live the span of ten or more of your short human lives,” she pointed out, again significantly.

“Good point.”

“Fit enough, you think?”

“Yes, me think.”

“So, what are you going to do today?” she asked by way of diplomatically changing the subject.

“There some firewood needs chopping,” I said. “I’ll see to that this morning.”

“Sounds like a plan,” she said.

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